


All The Small Things

by eirabach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 31 days of positivity, Drabbles, F/M, Fluff and more fluff, Gen, all the smol things, charming family - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-10 23:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 12,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7865515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of one-shots and drabbles written for TLynnWords's August positivity challenge, centered around Captain Swan and the Charming family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Manners Maketh

**Author's Note:**

> Day One: Prompt: Princess

She doesn’t know anything about etiquette. 

 

Her upbringing - if you could call it that - hadn’t exactly dwelt on elocution, deportment, or cutlery selection. Instead of memorising the difference between a salad fork and a meat fork, she’d been hoarding kraft dinners under her unmade bed, cold sauce smeared around her mouth as she’d stuffed her face with shaking fingers. She’d enough manners to get by, and a sensible aversion to events where anything too fancy might have been required, and none of this had been a problem, or at least not a problem to Emma herself, until she’d announced her engagement to her very devoted, very delighted, very  _ royal _ parents.

 

At that moment, and for some weeks afterwards, the hysterical joy of the world’s most maternally frustrated mother-of-the-bride had been channelled with no little enthusiasm into organising the single most over-done, crazy-formal engagement party Storybrooke, and perhaps the realm as a whole, had ever had the misfortune to see.

 

Emma had stood the dress fittings with good grace, or at least better grace than Killian who had come home muttering darkly about inseams and  _ ridiculous dickie bows, Swan, I look like a penguin _ . She’d even enjoyed the dance lessons, letting her father spin her around the living room gleefully while her mother barked instructions at Killian like a tiny, waltzing drill sergeant. Apparently there were slightly more rules involved when dancing with a princess of the realm, even if said princess was your gods-approved true love, and you weren’t in the right realm to start with.

 

In fact she’d secretly enjoyed almost all of Mary Margaret’s machinations which came as a surprise, since she and Killian were in agreement that allowing her freedom over the engagement party meant she was much more likely to leave their plans for a quiet ceremony on the  _ Jolly _ alone. It was nice to be fussed over, to be the centre of her mother’s attention in a way she’d dreamed of as a little motherless girl. The only downside, in fact, was the utter intensity with which Mary Margaret insisted that Emma was a princess, and that this was to be a Royal Event. A Royal Event with flags and banners and bugles, and a five course silver service dinner with more cutlery at one place setting than Emma had owned in her whole adult life.

 

Mary Margaret had almost certainly wanted to make Emma feel special, but it had all become a little too much, backfiring tremendously until she felt small, like a child playing pretend in her own life. And never has she felt more of a fraud than tonight, two days before the party to end all parties, sitting opposite her mother at the table in the loft with the contents of her cutlery drawer strewn between them.

 

Perhaps her mother can tell she’s struggling, or perhaps it’s some sort of maternal instinct that keeps her eyes soft and her voice gentle as she holds up the fourth fork of the evening.

 

“Fish fork,” she says, “it’s for…”

 

“Cheese?” Emma rolls her eyes, her fingers twitching towards to bottle of red that she’s not allowed to touch until she can memorise which fucking glass it belongs in. “Why do you even need a different fork for every damn thing anyway?”

 

Mary Margaret huffs, dropping the fork to the table so that it clanks against its ridiculous number of fellows. “We don’t need to know  _ why _ , Emma. We just need to  _ know _ .”

 

“I don’t need to know,” she shoots back.

 

Mary Margaret raises her eyebrows a little higher than her voice, “You’re a princess, Emma, and you - ”

 

“I’m not a princess,” Emma folds her arms over her chest, her voice heavy and bitter, “I’m not. And memorizing a frankly ungodly number of forks isn’t going to make me into one. Give it up, mom, please, and open the damn wine.”

 

Her mother sighs, looking down at the tablecloth, and for a moment Emma thinks she might have won, but then Mary Margaret picks up the rounded fork (“ _ Spork” “Salad fork! Are you even trying?” _ ) and flicks at the tines with the pad of her thumb.

 

“When I was small,” she begins, eyes on the fork still, “being a princess was all I knew. I had gowns and servants, even a pony. I sat at my parents’ sides and people used to  _ bow _ to me.”

 

She looks up and catches Emma’s eye.

 

“Must have been fun,” Emma says, for lack of anything else to say. It’s not like she can relate, after all.

 

“It was,” Mary Margaret agrees, “but it turned me into the most dreadful brat.”

 

Emma snorts out a laugh, “Super encouraging, mom.”

 

“No, it’s true!” Mary Margaret smiles, her eyes going misty as she reminisces, “I was awful, just the most precocious, spoilt madam. And then I lost my mother, and my father was so often away, and do you know what happened?”

 

“I’m pretty sure there was an Evil Queen, and some banditry, and you hit a guy with a rock, and then did a pretty bad job of living happily ever after?”

 

“Before that, even.” Mary Margaret reaches across the table, dropping the fork to tap at Emma’s forearm until she relaxes her posture and lets her mother take her hand, “People started to look at me to rule, to make good choices, to make decisions for the good of people I didn’t even know, even if they made my life harder. Nobody seemed to care what I wanted, only what I could do for them.” 

 

Emma blows a piece of hair from her face, and returns her mother’s smile with a quirk of her own lips, “Well I can’t even imagine how that felt.”

 

“When it got too much, even years later when I was running around the forest trying to regain a kingdom with an army of just your father and some dwarves, I used to recite types of cutlery to myself at night, just to remind myself who I really was. Who I really am. They took my crown from me, Emma, just as they took yours from you, but we are princesses still, and nobody can take that away from us.”

 

Emma wrinkles her nose, “So you’re saying..?”

 

“I’m saying that it doesn’t matter if you’ve never sat in a throne room, or dressed for a ball, or held a dinner party for the dukes of seven kingdoms. Things don’t make you a princess. You are one, you always have been, and you always will be.” Mary Margaret gives her hand a final squeeze before settling back into her seat, “And I’m your mother, so humour me.”

 

“So the spoons are a metaphor for my lost identity as the princess of a far away land?” 

Emma eyes the wine again, and wonders how Killian’s night at The Rabbit Hole is going. He already knows every possible cutlery combination and their uses, apparently. Stupid pirate. Stupid navy.

 

Mary Margaret thrusts the largest towards her encouragingly, “If it helps you remember them, then sure.”

 

It’s going to be a long, long night.

  
  
  



	2. Smile

She sees it all the time now, it’s giveaway eyes crinkling over a granny’s to go cup, wide and bright as they set sail, secret and soft in the darkness of their spare room when she puts her brother down to sleep.

She can feel it even when she can’t see it, warm on the back of her neck when she’s working at her desk, or pressed between her shoulder blades at 4am when the sheets are twisted up beneath them.

“What are you smiling at?”

He never takes his eyes off her, all teeth and dimples.

“My happy ending.”


	3. Heart(s)

“Would somebody explain this again?”

Killian stares at the mounds of peanuts they’ve been using to bet, his own easily twice the size of David’s. Henry sighs, fixing Killian with a patronising teenage smile.

“I’ve told you. Follow suit, highest card wins the trick, and hearts are forfeit.”

“Lowest score wins,” David adds with a bitter glance at Henry’s tiny pile, “which means Henry wins, because he always does.”

Killian grimaces as his jack wins another trick. Henry slides even more nuts his way.

“And why is that?” He asks.

“Simple,” Henry grins, “I had a good teacher; I cheat.”


	4. Beauty

Emma sits carefully on the end of the bed, her skirts folded neatly beneath her so as not to crease them, and glares daggers at the bathroom door. Their dinner reservations are in twenty minutes, and she’s been ready for an hour.

“You know,” she calls, “this was your idea, I was quite happy with take out. Which we may have to order anyway if you don’t get a goddamn move on!” 

There’s the sound of running water, a muffled oath, and then Killian storms into the bedroom all leather and eyeliner, topped with a scowl. 

“So be it, Swan. I’m not going out like this.” 

Emma runs her eyes over the sharp edges of his scruff, the perfect number of undone shirt buttons, and the artistically ruffled hair. “Want to spend a romantic evening in with the mirror instead?” 

He scoffs. “Hardly, Swan. Look at this!” 

He jabs a finger aggressively at the part in his hair. Emma rises from the bed for a closer look. 

“It’s a gray hair,” she says matter-of-factly, because it is. Just one strand of steel sitting in a chocolate sea. “No big deal.” 

“No big - Swan!” 

She struggles to swallow her laughter at his affronted expression, running her fingers through the offending hair before tapping him lightly on the nose. 

“You’re like a million years old, Killian. It was bound to happen eventually.” 

“ _Eventually_ ,“ Killian grumbles. 

She lets her hands drop to his lapels, stroking across the smooth leather of his jacket as she looks up at him through her lashes. 

“I kinda like it,” she says, sashaying her hips closer to his, “makes you look distinguished.” 

“I don’t want to look distinguished,” he answers with a pout, “I want to look -” 

“Dashing?” She offers, hands ghosting lower, “ _Dangerous?_ ” 

She drags his hook up between them and holds it in both hands, her breath misting over the metal as she rests the curve against parted lips. Killian’s eyes flash dark, his grumpiness forgotten in the time it takes him to push her back against the bed frame, her carefully pressed dress rumpling as he slides it over her thighs. 

They don’t make dinner.


	5. Trust

They’ve reached an impasse of sorts. The cooling bribe of Granny’s takeout on the kitchen counter bearing witness to the way they watch each other with narrowed eyes, neither of them willing to give an inch, but equally unable to withdraw.

“I promised Snow,” David says.

“That’s as may be, mate, but Emma’s not here. If you’ve an issue there I suggest you raise it with those bloody dwarf friends of yours, since they’re the ones who called her away.”

“Oh don’t worry, I intend to, but that doesn’t solve my problem now, does it?”

They both look down then to where the problem lies in his car seat, chewing on his foot and drooling merrily.

“No,” says Killian, “the answer’s no.”

“Oh come on,” groans David, “Snow’s been looking forward to this movie for months. It’ll only be for a couple of hours.”

Neal squeals, and kicks his legs hard enough to rock the car seat back and forth slightly. Killian physically withdraws.

“I wouldn’t even know what to do with the boy.”

David rolls his eyes. “You don’t have to do anything with him. Hold him, feed him a bottle if he gets hungry. Maybe pull some funny faces - you’re good at that.”

“Oi,” Killian grumbles.

“Come on, Hook,” David’s wheedling now, “just this one time I swear. I trust you.”

That’s what does it, and it’s all David can do not to look triumphant as Killian’s eyes flick from his, to the baby, and then back again, shock and begrudging gratitude written all over his face.

“One time,” he says in a warning tone that belies the flush that’s worked over his ears, “I’m not making a habit of becoming your nanny, Dave.”

“Oh,” David reaches down, unstraps his son, and drops him rather unceremoniously in the arms of a pirate, “that won’t be necessary.”

He makes it to the door before turning back to see Neal chewing on the curve of the hook, Killian smiling down at him with soft, soft eyes.

“Suits you,” David says, and closes the door behind him.


	6. Family

It’s her first Thanksgiving, or the first one that’s mattered anyway. This had been her mother’s idea, but it’s Emma’s windows that have steamed up from hours of slaving at a hot stove, and Emma’s dining table that’s creaking under the weight of dozens of overfilled dishes.

Every chair in the house has been pressed into service; the four dining chairs reserved for her parents, Belle, and Regina, her baby brother wriggling in Henry’s grasp as he sits perched on a stool that once lived in the bowels of the Jolly, and Killian sinks into the soft cushions of the loveseat, waiting patiently for her to find somewhere to stick the bowl of buttered potatoes she carries.

She squeezes the bowl into the gap between Henry’s glass and the most ridiculously over sized turkey Little Bo Peep could (begrudgingly) provide, and flops down beside him with a heavy, satisfied sigh.

“Alright there, love?” he asks softly, his hand coming up to brush the flour off her cheek (just because she’s never had much reason to cook before doesn’t mean she _can’t,_ after all.)

She looks around the crowded table, the mismatched furniture holding her mismatched family, and smiles.

“Never better.”


	7. Save

Henry rests his chin on the Jolly’s table and watches golden coins the size of his palm drop, one after another, from his fingers into a battered and weather worn chest.

“How many of these do you have?”

Killian half turns, several sheaves of paper balanced on his left forearm, and shrugs.

“Enough, I wager. Why lad, you looking for a loan?”

“No,” Henry answers, a little too quickly going by the sudden gleam in his eyes, “just wondered what they were worth, y’know. You might be a millionaire or something.”

Killian drops the papers into a box, and leans back against the cabin’s dresser with a half curious smirk.

“And what of it if I am, lad?”

Henry picks up one of the coins and examines it more closely, running his finger over raised words written in a language he can’t understand.

“You’d never need a job, at least, and maybe we could get a pool and I could have a car,” he shrugs and drops the coin back into the pile, “it’d be pretty cool.”

“You know,” Killian says, turning back to the dresser and rummaging around, “there are things on this ship far more precious than gold.”

Henry sits back in his chair, arms folded and eyebrows raised.

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

Killian turns back to him with a cutlass held out, and an encouraging sort of smile on his face. Henry makes a point of slowly tracking his eyes from the cutlass in Killian’s hand to the box they’d packed earlier where fifteen or more swords, cutlasses and foils lie safely tucked away.

“Is there a weird moral lesson here?” Henry asks, “Because I’m pretty sure a tonne of gold is way better than some rusty old sword. And I’m pretty sure you agree with me.”

“Normally, I’d agree of course,” acquiesces Killian with a tilt of his head, “but this is a rather special exception.”

He gestures for Henry to take the cutlass, which he does begrudgingly, his feet dragging as he stands.

“Can we talk about that loan again?”

“Now,” Killian says, his eyes bright as he hands it over, “what do you think of that?”

Henry gives the cutlass an experimental wave. It fits him. Neither too long nor too short, the weight balancing just right. He tries to spin it like his grandpa taught him and drops it with a clatter.

“It’s pretty cool, I guess,” he says as he picks it up, “why’s it so special?”

Killian scratches at his neck and looks briefly at the floor before he answers.

“It was your father’s. I taught him with it, when he was a lad like yourself.”

“Really?” Henry’s voice cracks slightly, and he swallows hard, tightening his grip on the cutlass, “You’re super old.”

“And you’re an ungrateful wretch,” Killian shoots back, but they’re both smiling.

“Well you gave me a sword I don’t know how to fight with,” Henry ventures, biting his lip, “that’s not as good as a car.”

Killian frowns. “I thought your grandfather taught you?”

“It’s been a while,” Henry shrugs, “I’m a bit rusty.”

“I could - “ Killian stops, almost wincing, before shaking his head slightly and carrying on, “show you some moves. Perhaps. If your mothers are amenable.”

Henry beams, and Killian’s answering smile is at least as bright as the doubloons between them.

“I’d like that.”

“Me too, lad. Me too.”


	8. Question

It’s the middle of the night, but she can’t sleep. There are a hundred thousand disaster scenarios fighting for attention in her brain, a million or more things she could or should be doing, but for now, in the heavy dark of the night with Killian warm beneath her there’s only one nagging thought that she can’t quite square away, and it hangs, cool and solid, in the space between her breasts.

“I have a question,” she says, propping her chin on her hand and tapping gently at Killian’s side.

Killian opens one eye, lips twisting sleepily as he looks down at her, “Hmm?”

“This,” she holds the ring he gave her back in Camelot up to the light, the silver chain pulling tight between them, “you said it was lucky.”

“A sailor’s superstition, perhaps,” Killian says, propping his left arm behind his head so he can see better, “Liam certainly believed it was.”

“Why?” Both eyebrows go up at that, and she turns her head so that her cheek rests against his chest. “Humor me.”

“Well, I didn’t much think to ask, honestly. He told me it was lucky and I believed him. He never gave me a reason not to,” his brow furrows slightly, “not then, at any rate.”

Emma gives him a small sorry smile, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean - “

“It’s fine,” he reaches over to take the ring, letting it spin on the end of its chain, “I’m afraid I’ve no proof to offer you, love.”

“You gave it to me,” says Emma, stilling the turn of the ring with her fingers over his, “to keep me safe. You said it had kept you alive, and then you gave it to me, and then you died.”

Killian leans forward to drop a lingering kiss on the top of her head, “You mustn’t keep thinking on that.”

“It’s a pretty hard thing to forget,” she sighs, “but that’s not what I’m talking about. Why do you think that happened? Was it the ring?”

“You don’t believe in coincidence, love?”

Emma scoffs, “Not anymore. Not in this town.”

“So perhaps it’s magic,” Killian drops the ring so that it lies in her open palm, “that seems appropriate, somehow. Or maybe, it’s just a ring.”

“Just a ring?” she looks at him with faux wide-eyes, a hint of a tease in the way her tongue peeks out from the corner of her mouth.

“You know,” he says, voice light, but eyes not quite meeting hers, “it can be whatever you want it to be, Swan. Now please, can we sleep before that accursed dwarf breaks in through the window and drags us off into the night?”

He closes his eyes again, moving his arm from behind his head to pull her flush into his side. She waits until the rise and fall of his chest is slow and steady before lifting her head from his shoulder just enough to pull the ring’s chain over her head. Luckily he’s a hell of a heavy sleeper, only letting out a wordless grumble as she fiddles with the clasp, letting the ring drop into her hand. With a last quick glance at his slack face, she slides the ring onto the fourth finger of her left hand - something she hasn’t dared to do since he came back to her, afraid to tempt fate, or maybe just afraid to admit just how much she _wants_.

She stares at it as her eyes grow heavy, her left hand splayed over his heart, the jewel glowing even in the dim light so she knows there’s no way he’ll miss it when he wakes.

“Alright,” she says softly, fingers flexing against his chest, “I know what I want.”


	9. Protect

She’s woozy and light-headed, a tremor in her hands that she can’t control, her magic coming in fits and starts - sometimes great forceful waves that she can barely direct, other times pathetic dribbles that leave her exposed and vulnerable. That leave them all exposed and vulnerable.

It comes to a head when they confront Hyde, his nasty smile as she collapses, the thundering of blood in her ears as she watches her family rush him, the powerlessness making her hands shake harder.

Her mother stops by her side, all bandit, all business.

“Don’t worry, Emma. We’ve got this.”

(They do.)


	10. Quote

“I know when you’re quoting something,” he’d said, but he never does.

It becomes a bit of a game between her and Henry, to see who can fit the most ridiculous quotes into day to day conversation before Killian’s lips purse into an irritable little pout.

“It seems to me to be bad form, teasing a man in such a way.”

Emma laughs it off, but Henry seems to consider his words, his face lighting up as he comes up with an idea.

“Hey Killian,” he says, “how’d you feel about Netflix?”

“Intrigued, I’d say, since I’ve heard so much about it.”

“It’s full of TV shows and movies. Really quotable ones that everybody’s seen, you’ll love it.”

Killian looks unconvinced. “Clearly not everyone, lad.”

“Come on,” Henry’s so tall now he can sling his arm over Killian’s shoulder as he leads him into the living room, “I’ll make you a list.”


	11. Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little smutty, please skip if that's not your thing

She doesn’t remember noticing so much, not the first few times, not when it was all they could do to rip just enough clothing off to satisfy their needs. There’d been no time for slow caresses, no opportunity to laze and learn each others dips and curves and edges.

But now things are different.

They’re in their own home, a locked door and a dwarf-proof protection spell between them and the rest of the world, darkness and death defeated, one hundred percent God-approved true love, and she notices.

He hums his approval as she shucks his jacket from his shoulders, a sly little smirk appearing as she sets to attacking his buttons (for a man who leaves so many undone, he sure loves buttons. She makes a note to look out for vests with zippers), but before she can drag his shirt down his arms and toss it away he’s on her, crushing her against the closet door, his lips hard and insistent and his thigh pressed hotly between her legs.

“No fair,” she breaks away with a gasp, “you’re not naked enough.”

“I’m more naked than you,” he says, eyeing her rumpled sweater with a raised brow.

“Nope,” by sheer force of will she manages to extradite herself from the cage of his arms, pushing him backwards until the back of his knees hit the bed and he flops backwards with a surprised little oof. “I’ve been waiting a long time to get you naked, pirate. You’re not taking my fun away now.”

He lets her manhandle him just enough to pull his shirt away from his shoulders and drag it down his arms, exposing the firm planes of his chest and biceps she just wants to bite. He shakes his right hand free of the sleeve as he pulls her down to straddle his thighs, rising up to nip at her throat as she gives the left sleeve a firm tug.

Maybe too firm, if the the tell-tale sound of hook tearing through fabric is anything to go by.

“Whoops,” she says as he stills against her, “hope that wasn’t a favourite.”

“I couldn’t tell you which it was at this point,” he says into her skin, “but it has given me quite the idea.”

Her head lolls back as the cool weight of the hook settle at the back of her neck, curve pressing into her spine just enough to set her off balance so that she leans further into him, the seam of her jeans pressing oh-so-perfectly against the impressive ridge in his own.

He leans back just enough to look at her, a sly twinkle in his eyes even when their blown dark and wide with want.

“Hope it wasn’t a favourite,” he says, and rips her sweater clean away, her bra going with it in a flutter of wool and torn lace.

“That was my best bra,” she hisses, half in annoyance and half in pleasure as he works the tip of the hook under her jeans and holds it threateningly close to the button, “and these are my only good jeans.”

“Pity,” he says breathlessly, his eyes fixated on the rise and fall of her bare chest, “you’ll have to go about bare-arsed.” His hand comes around to squeeze at her ass as he speaks, and he thrusts up just as she grinds out, forcing an almost inhuman moan from her. “What a bloody tragedy that will be.”

“Cry me a river,” she says, pushing him back again and running her fingernails over his chest and along his arms, admiring the goosebumps that rise in her wake and stopping to tap her index finger against the edge of his brace, “now get this off, sailor.”

“Now now,” he says, eyebrows wild and tongue tucked into the corner of his mouth, “I thought you liked it?”

“I - I do,” she stutters out as he circles her nipple, oh so lightly, with the steel tip, “I really do, but I want - “

“Mmmmm?” he moves his attentions to the other breast, before his mouth hovers hot over the teased nipple, “Tell me what you want, love.”

“You.” It’s such a cheesy answer, but she can’t help it, winding her fingers in his hair and tugging lightly so that she can look him in the eye, “All of you. Naked. Now.”

“So demanding,” he tsks, closing his mouth over her nipple and combining the attentions of tongue and teeth and hook until she’s practically writhing in his lap, her hands caught tightly between them pressing fingerprints into his stomach.

“Off!” she growls, “Off, off, off!”

“As you wish.”

He leans back just far enough to work at his belt, his hook still running up and down her side, before teasing at her fly. She shakes her head slightly, reaching for his wrist.

“Killian?”

“Hush now, darling. Let me look after you,” he soothes, and she narrows her eyes. She knows a distraction technique when she sees one - she’s been the master of them for years after all.

“Killian.”

She speaks firmly, pushing back on his shoulders so that he can’t help but look at her, the discomfort in his eyes proof of what she’d already suspected.

“Why won’t you take it off?”

He shrugs, lowering his eyes until he’s staring at a loose thread on the bedspread.

“It’s not a pretty thing, Swan.”

She’d laugh if she didn’t think it would upset him more, but it’s hard to keep the disbelief out of her voice as she tips his chin up. “What you think a scar’s going to put me off? Sorry, Zeus, turns out you made a mistake, I’m too shallow for true love.”

He winces. “That’s not - “

“Then what is it?” she asks.

“I never have.” he mumbles, like he’s admitting to some terrible sin.

Her eyes go wide. “You what?”

“I’ve never taken it off. Not for… this.” he gestures vaguely between her bare breasts and his undone trousers, and flushes bright red like a teenage boy.

“Well well, I get to be the pirate’s first. That’s unexpected.” she says, swallowing her smile as he grimaces and looks away again.  “Hey. Hey, look at me. If you don’t want to, that’s ok. I’m not going to force you. I just -” she shrugs, gesturing to her own body, “this is who we are, right? We should be able to just be.”

He sighs, then nods once, unclicking the hook from the brace and letting it drop to the bed with a muffled thump. He offers her his braced arm.

“Go on then, Swan. Do the honors. If you run screaming let it be noted that I told you so.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” she says, and this time she lets the smile out, reassuring him as she works at the buckles that hold it in place.

It’s not pretty, but it’s not terrible. The centuries that have passed since he lost his hand have allowed the scar tissue to fade to a muted silver in a raised line at the very end of the stump, the rest of the flesh pale and sun-starved, odd dips and furrows a testament to just how many years he’s worn the brace.

Emma runs her fingers across the end, listening for any distress in the way his breath catches.

“Pretty neat job.”

Killian lets his lips turn up the slightest bit.

“Smee’s a hell of a seamstress.”

She stands up, leaving him sitting in the bed, and ignoring as best she can the way his shoulders shake ever so slightly as he tucks his wrist behind him, his tremulous smile dropping away to nothing. In one swift move she pulls her jeans and underwear down until they’re a puddle she can step out of and towards Killian, whose eyes have gone almost comically wide as she stands over him in all her glory.

“I love you,” she says firmly.

Killian swallows hard.

“And I you. Gods, more than you could ever - “

She lays one finger on his lips, feeling how quickly his breath is coming, and lays her other hand on his left shoulder.

“Enough. Put your hands on me, Killian.”

He does.


	12. Hope

“How do you do it?” Killian asks, head hung low as another town circuit comes to a fruitless end.

He’d known splitting up was a wretched plan from the off, but she’d seem so sure, so certain that their best hope of trapping Hyde and the Queen was to have as many bodies in as many places as possible, that he’d swallowed his caution and followed her plan.

Now he’s alone in a ghost town, half frantic with worry, and with nobody for company but the lady Snow White and the little prince who sleeps peacefully in a papoose on her back.

She looks at him with a familiarly furrowed brow.

“Do what?”

He gestures to the empty street, litter blowing down the gutters like something from one of those ‘westerns’ Dave made him watch, the air heavy with silence and the afterglow of magic.

“Carry on, hold on to hope things are going to get better when every day in this town is another disaster?”

Snow tilts her head and sets her hands on her hips.

“Well, what’s the alternative?” she asks baldly.

Killian shrugs, aware he probably sounds petulant but to fed up to care.

“Succumbing to the inevitable?”

Snow narrows her eyes at him and hums lightly.

“Would that be the two hundred years of vengence sort of inevitable? Because I don’t really have time for that.”

She jerks her head to indicate the sleeping babe, and makes to stride off in the direction of the Mayoral Mansion. So determined are her steps that even with his much longer paces he has to half jog to keep up.

“How do you, though? Keep on hoping?”

She pauses, that familiar frown returning as she considers the question.

“I… don’t. Not all the time. I’m not some insipid princess who thinks the world is all rainbows no matter what Regina says. I know things are tough, and I get frightened too. What sort of a world are we raising him in? Just look at what this world’s done to Emma.”

Her face falls as she says it, as if all the tragedies are replaying themselves in her mind, all the cruelties laid at the door of her daughter that should have never been her birthright.

“Aye,” he says quietly, “that’s true enough”

“But Killian, there is hope. Where there’s life, there’s always hope. And sometimes, even where there isn’t. Emma taught me that.” she shakes her head, a smile playing about her mouth, “Hope is just a matter of finding something to believe in.”

Killian scratches at his neck and squints at the darkening sky.

“She believed in me. Back there, I mean.”

Snow smiles broadly now, her eyes sparking with the grit and determination that won her a kingdom, and reaches up to squeeze his shoulder.

“She still does. And so do I.”

Killian scuffs the toe of his boot against the sidewalk feeling a little like a miscreant child shown the error of his ways.

“Hope.” she says it like an instruction, like an order, and he’s helpless but to obey.

He covers her hand with his for just a moment, and nods.

“Hope.”


	13. Friendship

Emma opens the door to her parent’s loft with a shove of her backside, scrabbling her way through before she drops the overstuffed grocery bags in her arms.

“Mom, I’m here! I bought the stuff you - oh!”

Mary Margaret beams at her from across the kitchen table, a streak of neon pink paint across her cheek and a smear of golden glitter on her chin.

Emma hefts the grocery bags higher so that they rest on her hips, and surveys the scene with mild alarm.

“What in the hell happened here?”

“It’s friendship day!” Says Mary Margaret as if that should be a given, “I’m making cards for my class.”

Emma looks at the piles of craft paper, sequins and card, at the glitter in the rug, and the dozens of lidless felt tips.

“You’re making a mess.”

Mary Margaret huffs and rolls her eyes. “Don’t be joyless. Look.” She shuffles papers around until the pulls out something pink and turquoise and embossed with so much glitter Emma’s thinks they’ll be walking it through the loft for months, “I made you one too.”

Emma has to step around craftageddon in order to slide the groceries onto a clear patch of counter space, and in doing so gives Mary Margaret a clear opportunity to thrust the card into her hand.

“Uh, thanks,” Emma manages caught off guard, she’s never been given something as simple as a handmade card. Ever. From anybody, “but you’re my mom, not my friend.”

Mary Margaret purses her lips.

“I was your friend first.”

Emma runs her finger over the edge of the neon heart, follows the words ‘I love you’ even as the glitter spills under her nails.

“Yeah,” she says, letting herself smile as she catches Mary Margaret’s knowing look, “I guess you are.”


	14. Mother

She doesn’t tell anybody.

Not when she’s perched on the edge of the bathtub, holding a damp stick with shaking fingers. Not when the smell of grilled cheese turns her stomach, or her morning coffee makes her gag. She’s silent, but her mind is so loud it deafens her.

(I can’t be a mother. I can’t. I can’t.)

She plays the memory of Henry’s birth over and over again as she lies awake at night, until she can feel the shackles around her ankles, hear Henry’s cries as they carry him away.

(She remembers his face, his tiny fingers and toes, the rush of love she never thought she could feel.

She dwells on the lie.)

Her boys notice that she’s tetchy, family dinners becoming strained as she’s either monosyllabic from exhaustion or absent altogether, retching as quietly as possible upstairs. She tells them it’s stomach flu. They must believe her because one morning she awakes to the gift of a large bottle of pepto bismol and a note saying they’ve gone sailing and she should rest up.

(She throws the bottle away and cries for twenty minutes. Great guilty sobs that make her head pound and her stomach roil.)

She’s taking her frustrations out on the washer one Saturday, her phone having reminded her that her second missed period should be due any day now when she still hasn’t got her head around missing the first, when Henry half tiptoes into the room, sidling up to her as if she’s one of Violet’s twitcher horses.

“I do love you, mom. You know that, right?”

Emma gives the Tide a particularly brutal shake.

“I’m not increasing your allowance kid so give it up.”

Henry holds up his hands in defeat.

“Ok, ok. But maybe an advance? I really want to take Violet to see the new marvel movie.”

He bats his eyelashes, she rolls her eyes.

“Is your other mother this easy to rob?”

“Oh easier, trust me,” he says casually backing back out. “Love you. You’re the best.”

“I bet you say that to all your moms!” Emma sing songs after him, his little snort of laughter bringing a smile to her own face. “Be back by six. No drink, no drugs, no portals, got it?”

“Got it, Mom.”

It’s silly, the way the truth hits her as she fishes well worn socks out for the bin and debates the best temperature setting for a Captain America onesie, but epiphanies often are.

Suddenly, among the soft sweaters and dark shirts, the vests and the plaid, she can almost see the frills of a little dress, a tiny shirt, socks so small she’ll lose one of every pair.

She presses her hand to her belly, sniffing away a stupid hormonal tear.

“Hello,” she whispers, aware of the possibility of prying ears, “I’m your mother.”


	15. Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a sneak peek of my current WIP 'Renegades'. Please do let me know if you're interested because I could use the shove to get it done!

They drag the skiff aground in a sandy cove far from the lights of any nearby towns. It’s a beautiful clear night, but it’s colder than it has been for weeks, and along with the salt water drenching her petticoats, it soon sets her shivering. Hook sets to gathering driftwood, but not before removing his long leather duster and dropping it at her feet.

“Make use of it,” he says a trifle gruffly, “it won’t grow any warmer.”

She tucks it over her shoulders as she watches him search the darkness along the tide line for kindling. It seems surreal to be sitting here in his coat, surrounded by the smell of sweat and salt and sage, owing him her life, when only days ago she’d been watching him swing in her net.

When he kneels before her to build the fire she watches the pull of his waistcoat over his shoulders, and the way his pirates luck glints as the moonlight catches it.

“Does it work,” she asks, mainly to distract herself from the sudden urge to run her fingers through his hair, “the lucky necklace? Does it work?”

He stops arranging the firewood and raises an eyebrow.

“Odd question, that,” he says, “what brings it on?”

Emma shrugs and burrows herself deeper into the warmth of his coat, “Just doesn’t seem to be very lucky, since you’ve ended up here on the run for your life.”

Hook quirks his lips into a lopsided smile, “Well for a pirate, love, that’s an everyday occurrence.”

“But your ship,” she says, the words bitter on her tongue, “and your crew!”

He shakes his head, returning to his fire building with a little more aggression.

“They’ll get theirs, Swan. Fear not. We may be pirates but there’s a code we live by, and those that have betrayed me will pay dearly for it.”

“You must wish you’d never met me,” she mumbles, pulling the high collar around her face, “I’ve brought nothing but trouble.”

Hook stops, dropping the last of the firewood into the sand, and reaches over the banked wood to lift her chin with his thumb.

“Swan,” he says, “you robbed me blind, caught me in a trap, stole and then lost the one item I’ve spent centuries hunting for, got me chased by knights and made me row a bloody dingy for miles with one hand and a hook.” He smiles, and even in the moonlight his eyes seem to shine brighter than the sun, “meeting you has been a bloody adventure, and I wouldn’t change it for all the ships and gold in the world.”

She gives him a watery smile, “Really?”

“Well,” he shrugs, “maybe for all the ships and gold in the world. I’m still a pirate.”

Emma sniffs out a little laugh. “Good,” she says softly, and he lets his hand linger on her face a moment longer.

She can’t say she minds.


	16. Wedding

“Have you thought about roses?” David asks as he drops a Manila folder as thick as a Bible onto the table, the thunk of its weight making Emma jump and choke on a bite of her grilled cheese.

“What,” she wheezes, “ever? Or just recently?”

David glares at her.

“I need to know how many arches you want so I can order the right number of stems, Emma. You need to work with me here.”

Emma manages to swallow with some difficulty, and leans forward to rest her chin on her folded hands.

“All right, I’ll play. Who put you up to this?”

David sighs. “Nobody put me up to anything Emma, organising a wedding is hard work and we need to settle things.”

She lifts her eyebrows, and settles one hand on top of the bulging folder.

“It’s not your wedding, Dad.”

“I know that,” he scoffs, “it’s far more important. It’s my daughter’s.”

“And Killian’s.”

David tilts his head and scrunches his face up.

“I suppose, if he has to be involved.”

Emma smiles, and pats the folder. “So don’t you think you’d better let us organise it?”

David looks mortified.

“You’ll never be ready in time!”

“Dad,” she wills patience into her tone, “we’ve been engaged for two days.”

“Which is why I’ve run up this guest list,” David produces an extremely technical looking spreadsheet with what looks worryingly like colour coordination, “time is of the essence Emma.”

With a sigh and a shake of her head, Emma stands, leaving half a sandwich and the majority of a mug of coffee.

“Hey!” David says, standing as well and hoisting the folder under his arm, “Where are you going?”

Emma swings her jacket on, and strides for the door.

“To elope.”


	17. Sacrifice

It takes a week before disaster strikes, which is probably some sort of record for them.

He falls right back into the old routine though, slashing his way through undergrowth, his hand constantly hovering over his sword as Henry keeps pace behind him, his infernal phone beeping incessantly as they get closer to the goal.

“Does your mother know you’ve this tracking device on her?” he grinds out, pulling his jacket sleeve forcibly free of the brambles.

Henry stays focused on his phone, only shrugging vaguely with one shoulder. “Dunno, probably. She’s got one on my phone though, and it seemed a good idea, what with, well.” He gestures vaguely to the rapidly darkening forest. “You can’t rely on magic for everything.”

Killian grunts heavily in agreement.

“She’s here,” Henry says, stopping dead and holding his phone out in front of him like a torch, “within five meters.”

Killian wipes his slightly sweaty palm on his jeans, and surveys the undergrowth with narrowed eyes. They’d left the Charmings and Regina back in town, certain that the Evil Queen’s efforts to waylay the saviour by means of an easily broken sleeping curse could only be meant as a distraction, but when Emma’s nowhere to be seen he starts to doubt himself. He has a sudden, terrible vision of her buried and choking under the sudden earth and his heart begins to hammer painfully in his chest, his lungs constricting as his breath comes faster and sharper and shallower…

“Killian!”

Henry’s shout jolts him out of his worst-case-scenario, and he follows the line of the lad’s arm as he points to a nearby hawthorn tree.

“Look, under there!”

Indeed, under the low branches and disguised by a mound of leaves, he sees the tell-tale flash of a bright red sleeve.

His jacket catches on the barbs on the branches as he pulls her free, her dead weight and the lack of clearance working against him, but finally she’s lying, peaceful and still on the path.

He finds it rather hard to look at her. It doesn’t look much like sleep from where he’s standing. There’s no mumbling, no sudden snores, her legs are perfectly still in a way he’s never known them to be at 4am, and he’d never thought he’d miss that of all things.

He clears his throat heavily and gestures to Henry.

“Off you go then, lad.”

Henry looks at him as if he’s gone mad.

“Aren’t you going to do it?”

“Well,” Killian shuffles awkwardly on the spot and rubs at his neck, “I’ve not had a lot of experience in these matters.”

Henry stares at him blankly.

“You passed a test set by the gods.”

“Yes well. One doesn’t like to push one’s luck, lad.”

Henry rolls his eyes.

“Come on, just kiss her. There’ll be a rainbow. It’ll be romantic. Plus it’s cold out and my phone needs charging.”

Killian wrinkles his nose, but drops to one knee regardless.

“Your complaining will certainly add to the romance.”

“Ugh whatever. I’ll turn around.”

He does so, and Killian takes a moment to just look at her face, pale and relaxed, before dropping the softest of kisses to her lips.

She awakes with a gasp and a burst of rainbow light that shakes the leaves around them and sets Killian beaming with delight. Emma rises up on her elbows, her face flush with life and maybe a touch of embarrassment, and quirks her lips at him.

“Took you long enough,” she says, but there’s no venom in it. Her eyes skip over his body as if inspecting him for injury and pause at the left arm of his coat. “What happened to your jacket?”

Killian looks down at the tattered leather, probably beyond even the most skilled seamstress, and shrugs.

“Some sacrifices are worth making, love.”

This time she pulls him down to kiss, smiling against his mouth, and they both pretend not to hear Henry gag.

“Won’t somebody think of the children?”


	18. Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuance of chapter 17 'Sacrifice'

“True love’s kiss, huh?” Emma leans back against the kitchen counter, a hot cocoa clutched firmly in both hands, “Sounds romantic.”

“So your boy assured me,” says Killian, who’s sitting at the table unlacing his boots, “though it was a tad muddy for my tastes.”

Emma takes a sip of her drink, and wrinkles her nose. “You would prefer the grand God-approved version.”

Killian crosses his legs and smirks at her. “It’s nice to make an impression.”

“Yeah,” Emma’s eyes drop to her mug, “that’s one way of putting it.”

“Hey,” He’s on his feet at once, her mug being gently removed from her hands so that he can wrap his warm fingers around her still slightly chilled ones. “We’re all right.”

She hums softly and lets her head drop to rest on his shoulder.

“Do you ever think it might get a bit much?” she asks, her nose pressed into the heat of his neck.

“What’s that then?”

She pulls back so that she can see his face.

“True Love. God,” she laughs and scrubs a fiat over her eyes, “it even sounds crazy, like I should put it in air quotes or shout every time I say it or something.”

Killian smirks again.

“You can shout it from the rooftops love, there’ll be no complaints from me.”

She rolls her eyes and slaps lightly at his bicep. “I was being facetious, idiot. I just… Don’t you think it’s a bit… Magic?” He shakes her head, “I don’t know. Sometimes I still feel like this is too ridiculous to be real.”

“Hmm,” Killian pulls back from her to rest his hand and hook on her shoulders, his eyes roving over her face, “now that you mention it. After all, I’ve several centuries on you, we live in a realm neither of us were born to, you’re a lost princess to a distant land, and I’m the bad guy in a tale for children.”

She opens her mouth, but he drops a finger to her lips.

“Let me finish, Swan. You’ve a leaf in your hair and I’ve dirt on my knees. Your son is currently having supper with the Evil Queen’s slightly better half. We’ve a house to ourselves, and when we kiss we can break curses and create entertaining light shows for miles around. And when I touch you,” he drags his fingers to the collar of her shirt and her breath hitches in anticipation, “I can make you flush more beautifully than any sunset I’ve ever seen.”

He lifts an eyebrow, but his smile is soft rather than salacious, “It’s perfectly ridiculous, Swan. And perfectly real.”

She smiles as he pulls his finger away, pressing forward only to let her lips hover millimetres from his.

“Well, if you put it like that.”

The eyebrow wriggles and his eyes flash dark as she runs her hands down his chest.

“Wanna make some real magic?” she breathes.

She doesn’t have to ask twice.


	19. Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set at the end of season 2

Most of his life he’s been sea foam, tossed and turned and buffeted about by cruel gods only to wash up, motherless, fatherless, brotherless, loverless, on the shores of a desperate vengeance.

He’s let it control him as well as any master ever did, his every decision shot through with the dark urge to hurt and ruin and destroy, and he’s revelled in it as much as he’s drowned in it. After all, what is a life worth to a man with nothing left to live for?

When she offers him the choice - to join them, to be part of something - he barely holds in the laughter. Such a choice is not for men like him. Fate made his path clear centuries ago, dark and tangled and rutted as it may be, and he must follow it to the inevitable end.

But then he looks down at the bean in his hand, and he wonders.


	20. Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A follow on from chapter 14 'Mother'

It’s not the most auspicious start.

When she tells him, she’s already eight weeks gone, her own nerves having gotten the better of her beforehand, and she spends hours debating the cutest, most romantic, most touching ways to tell him. Then he walks in on her one evening, already dressed for bed and green around the gills, and she just thrusts the positive test in his face with a hissed assurance that ‘this is all your fault you know.’

Killian stares blankly at the plastic stick, before looking at her, baffled, and gingerly reaching out to take it.

“If I’m to surmise some fault from this you ought to tell me what it is.”

She scowls at him. Her head’s banging and her stomach aches and she’s got an almighty spot coming on her forehead. She doesn’t have the energy.

“It’s a test. For pregnancy,” Killian still looks utterly confused, and she lets out a long frustrated breath, “you pee on it.”

Killian winces, and holds the stick a little more delicately.

“You want me to - “

“No, idiot! I peed on it. I already did that.” She shrugs in slightly embarrassed acknowledgement, “I’ve peed on about twenty of them to be honest.”

“To find out if you are pregnant.” Killian says softly, staring down at the two pink lines. Emma swallows hard, a sudden surge of guilt making her blink back tears. This is not how she wanted this to go.

“Yeah, and now I feel like shit. I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted to - “

“Are you?” He asks, cutting her off, his words sharp but his eyes soft.

The words get stuck behind the lump in her throat, and she just nods.

The test falls to the floor with a clatter, and then she’s being dragged out of her chair, Killian wrapping himself around her and holding on for dear life. So tightly is his face pressed against her neck that it takes her a moment to realise that he’s crying, his whole body shuddering against hers.

“Are you happy?” She asks, a little breathless from the force of his hug. It’s a weird question to ask someone who’s bawling their heart out, she’ll admit, but it’s the only one that matters.

“Oh Emma,” he pulls back, running his thumbs under her eyes to catch the tears she hadn’t realised she was shedding in return, “I’m a _father_.”


	21. Brave

The wind whips around her, sticking her hair to her face and leaving her lips salty as she licks them.

“I’m not sure about this.”

She’s clinging on so hard she can feel the ropes ripping into her skin, but it doesn’t make her feel any steadier, not with the ship creaking what feels like miles beneath her and the circling of squawking seagulls that remind her far too much of vultures.

“I am really not sure about this.”

Henry turns, swinging one arm away from the rigging and making her cringe.

“Oh come on, mom. You can do it.”

Emma flexes her fists and let’s the sting of the rope burns ground her. God, the ground. Talk about things she’s never taken the time to appreciate.

“I don’t think I actually can,” she grits out through clenched teeth, “in fact I don’t think you should be doing it either.”

She can’t quite make it out, Henry’s too far above her, but she senses the eye roll regardless.

“Mom, Killian does this with <i>one hand</i>. It’s not that hard.”

As if to demonstrate he begins to launch himself even higher, swinging with the wind as if he’s been doing it all his life. Emma shudders.

“I beg to differ. If you fall from there I swear you are grounded, kid. Forever.”

“Literally!” Henry crows, flinging himself into the look out with wild abandon that leaves Emma with her height so far up her throat she’s at risk of throwing it up. “Come on, you’re supposed to be brave.”

Emma narrows her eyes and shuffles her toes slightly to test her stability.

“I’ll give you brave,” she grumbles, swallowing hard as another strong gust catches her jacket and tugs her off balance, “I’m going to ground you anyway for cheek.”

Henry laughs into the wind, and flips himself over the rail to scuttle down the opposite rigging until she can see the shit eating grin and raised eyebrow that she <i>knows> he hasn’t picked up from either mother.

“You’ve got to catch me first.”


	22. Forgiveness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I’m going to level with you. This is not a positive little bit. This is an angsty af mama!jones headcanon that @nothingimpossibleonlyimprobable and I were losing our shit about yesterday. But it’s ALL I WANT ok? (I’m not tagging this under the positivity challenge because yeah….. dark. And weird. I’m in a weird mood)

Davina Jones stands and sways, Reul Ghorm preventing her escape with a magical barrier she’s powerless to cross and watching her with small, shrewd eyes.

“You knew this day would come,” says the ancient one, her fingers tight around the wood of her stolen wand, a cursed wedding ring hanging from the tip, “you have broken all the laws…”

“I have broken no laws,” she half spits, “I fell in love.”

“You abandoned your post,” sniffs Ghorm, “betrayed your people. He understands that now.”

Brennan. Brennan who had tempted her from the sea with his promises, his _lies_. She can still remember the cold thrill of wind against flesh, the prick of the pebbles against unsteady feet, the sudden all-consuming rush of _yes_ and _him_ , and swallows hard against the tears she won’t allow herself to shed.

“I am the one betrayed. You have my wand,” she lifts her chin in the air, “my love is false, paid off with your words and your bribes. Why must you banish me, also? Why punish my sons for my sins? If indeed it is a sin to be happy, _sister_.”

Ghorm has the grace to look down, a frisson of something like shame crossing her otherwise carefully blank expression.

“You should never have left, Davina.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, allows herself to think of the happiest times; hours spent pouring over books where the strange shapes ran together until one day they became words, and he lifted her off of her feet and span her until she was wild with laughter and dizzy with love. Kisses and promises by the crackling fire, his pride and love for her burning hotter than any flame.  Her delight when their sons bore her eyes and his dark good looks. The brilliant, terrible fury with which she had loved them, still loved them, for all the good it did anybody, in the end.

But that had been before the war had come to them, and war changes many things. Men, she knows, are not exempt. She ought to have realised, gods know enough people have tried to tell her, and perhaps their bitter tirades and spittle-laced barbs were a sort of dark kindness. _You are what you are_ , they’d told her, _blood will out._  He’d scoffed at them and she’d believed him. What was fate, what was nature, compared to true love?

Now she’s only scoffing at herself. She wonders what he was offered to turn her in. What magic he wanted that she couldn’t give him. Does he know what he’s unleashed by sending her back? He’s a sailor, he knows what she ran from. 

Maybe he never believed her, after all.

Maybe she’ll ask him, find out the truth before she drags him away. Before she watches him swallowed by salt and silt.

Maybe she’ll laugh. She hopes she can learn to hate him enough to laugh.

The wind she had once found so exciting bites at her cheeks as her bare toes dig for footholds on the grassy edge. Below her the grey ocean swirls, behind her she can hear somebody scrambling down the hill towards her, their voice a high, reedy cry that is carried away before she can make it out.

_Liam._

Her broken heart thumps once. Twice.

_Killian._

One breath. In. Out.

“I won’t forgive this,” she swears.

Ghorm seems to barely resist the urge to roll her eyes, and Davina wonders if she’s close enough to the ocean’s power to pull her sister’s flesh from her bones with her bare hands, “You’ll be better where you belong. It’s the way things should be.”

There’s another cry, closer now, so close it sounds like _Mama_ , and she thinks it must be Liam. Liam her brave, darling boy. Will he know what his father has done? Will he remember her, when she’s nothing but the crest of a wave and a tale to fill grown men with dread? And Killian. He’s barely more than a baby, and yet so full of life and love, with the world laid out like a golden blanket at his feet.

He won’t remember her at all.

“They won’t forgive this.”

Reul Ghorm smiles, and it turns the sea water in her veins to ice.

“They’ll never know.”

The smallest push, and as she falls, down, down, down to become one with the breakers, she thinks that never is a very long time.


	23. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is vaguely based on some filming spoilers, just so you know!

Emma’s got four sleepless nights behind her, her hair a riotous tangle from the tossing and turning she’d done in the latest grimy motel room, her body shattered but her mind whirring insistently into the early hours. Eventually she gave up on the possibility of sleep that wouldn’t come, the bug pulling off the rain-slicked motel parking lot hours before dawn with a growl made of over revs and fear.

She shouldn’t be driving - shouldn’t even be able to stand in all honesty - but this whole trip has been a wash out, and if she knows Rumplestiltskin at all, she knows he wouldn’t send her on a wild goose chase for nothing.

No, he would have had a plan. And what’s the only thing standing between the Dark One and his very estranged pregnant wife?

An old wooden ship, and a man with no magic that holds her heart in the palm of his only hand.

She shouldn’t be driving. But she does twice the speed limit anyway.

There’s a brief rush of relief when the town sign appears looming out of the darkness - at least the town itself is still in the right realm, and she can’t take anything for granted around here - but it fades into nothingness as the bug crawls past her house, the dark, blank windows staring out at her accusingly.

She swallows the incessant fear that nags at her as she drives on, taking a short detour to Regina’s to check for lamplight in Henry’s bedroom window (and when she sees it glowing reassuringly through the crack in the curtains, she’s too relieved to be mad that he’s still up), before finally making it to the docks.

She leaves the bug’s lights running despite the strain on the elderly battery, because she likes the way the _Jolly_ looks, all lit up and rising out of the sea like some sort of beacon, the welcoming creak of her wood as she bobs at anchor soothing the nerves that still have hold of her heart.

“Ahoy!” she calls, exhaustion making her silly, “Permission to come aboard?”

It’s the dead of night, that 3am hour when the late night revellers from The Rabbit Hole have long since gone to bed and the early wakers haven’t yet crawled from their beds, but she knows that if he’s here, if he’s safe, he’ll answer.

It takes a moment - just long enough for fear to kick back in and for magic to tingle in her fingertips - but then there’s the sound of a scuffle and a muffled curse, and he appears at the top of the gangplank, hair ruffled and clothes in disarray, but with his sword still at his side and the hard glint in his eye that assures her that he hasn’t left his self-imposed duty post since the moment she kissed him goodbye.

He holds his hand up to protect his eyes from the headlights glare, and she can’t help herself, running full pelt up the gangplank to throw her arms around him, knocking him almost off his feet just so she can bury her face into his warm chest.

“All right?” he asks, his voice scratchy enough that she wonders if he’s slept as little as she has since they’ve been apart, “What’s happened, Swan?”

“Nothing,” she mumbles, which is a fact on several levels but she hasn’t the energy to talk about that now, “I’m just glad to be home.”


	24. Fairytale

“Not that one _again_.”

Emma pauses, her eyes flicking from the copy of _Winnie the Pooh_ open on her lap to her baby brother kicking away between them.

“Why not? It’s his favourite.”

Killian grumbles, looking down at the well-worn book with something not unlike disgust.

“He must have heard it a hundred times. And regardless, that bear’s a menace.”

“Oh, and what would you suggest then?”

“Something a little more swashbuckling perhaps?” he waggles his eyebrows and sends Neal into fits of giggles.

“I’m trying to get him to sleep, not traumatise him.”

“You wound me, Swan. I’d never dream of upsetting the little prince.” He sticks his tongue out, and Neal gives another shout of laughter before muting it with a well placed foot.

Emma narrows her eyes, unconvinced. Killian’s sudden enjoyment of babysitting is something she’s yet to get her head around - it’s hardly swashbuckling after all - and she’s reasonably certain he has ulterior motives for volunteering their services. She just hasn’t figured out what they could be yet. Especially since Neal seems to save all his grossest moments for when Killian is around.

“I dunno,” she says as if considering the likelihood, “He did puke in your mouth earlier.”

Killian cringes slightly, rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand and clearly wishing that he could rinse the memory away as easily as the taste.

“A fact I shall be sure to bring up quite regularly when he’s susceptible to shame I assure you.”

Emma sighs, and closes the book. Truth be told she’s pretty tired of the gluttonous little creature herself.

“All right. What are you gonna read him?”

“Ah!” Killian grins down at Neal, and leans over to pull Henry’s beloved storybook from underneath the coffee table, “It’s about true love, a beautiful princess, and an extremely dashing pirate.”

Emma rolls her eyes, but she can’t help the smile that follows the way Killian oh so carefully tucks Neal into the crook of his elbow and pays no mind whatsoever to the tiny fists grabbing for his jewellery.

“Now settle down, little lad, because this is _my_ favourite fairytale.”


	25. Surprise

It had hit her like a tonne of bricks, and it was all Snow White’s fault.

Okay, so It wasn’t her mom’s fault, not really, but she could certainly be blamed for bringing it up in the first place.

It had started over lunch one day, her mother bouncing Neal on her hip whilst furiously flicking through a toy catalogue, the afternoon’s discussion centering mainly on whether it was even worth buying birthday presents for a child whose favourite toy remained their own feet.

“This is the easy part,” Snow had groused, folding over the corner of the page with the loudest, brightest offerings, “what am I going to do when he grows up? Boys are so hard to buy for.”

Emma had raised her eyebrows and smiled over the brim of her coffee cup.

“Henry’s easy enough. Comic books and computers or any combination thereof and you’re set.”

Snow had hummed in agreement, then tilted her head to the side, fixing Emma with suddenly shrewd eyes.

“Your father’s a nightmare though, every year he asks for sheep, and every year I tell him we don’t even have a yard. What do you get for Killian? Or don’t I want to know?”

Emma had flushed, but probably not for the reasons Snow had been thinking.

“It hasn’t really come up.”

“Really,” Snow’s expression had become more curious, “when’s his birthday then?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know?_ ”

Snow had sounded horrified, and Emma had flushed harder feeling suddenly small and hopeless. What sort of True Love doesn’t even know her partner’s birthday?

“I don’t even think he knows!” she countered through her sudden sense of shame, “I’m pretty sure after two centuries counting kinda loses its appeal.”

“You should ask him,” Snow had said, hoisting Neal higher on her waist, “it doesn’t seem right, otherwise.”

It hadn’t seemed right, not after the thought had been put in her head anyway, and she’d enlisted Henry into her information gathering mission almost from the off.

(“Why don’t you just ask him?”

“Because then he’ll know that I don’t know!”

“That seems kinda ridiculous.”

“Don’t call your mother ridiculous.”

“But you _are_ being ridiculous!”

“And you _are_ grounded!”)

But they’d had no success with subtlety, and eventually Henry had become annoyed with dancing around the subject, and had asked him outright one night over pizza. Emma almost choking on her pepperoni when Henry had asked, “So when is your birthday anyway?” through a mouthful of garlic bread.

Killian had looked from one to the other of them, his eyebrow creeping up as he took in Emma’s expression of puce horror, and Henry’s casual eagerness. He’d lain his slice down on his plate, tapping at his chin with the tip of his hook as if deep in thought.

“Do you know what?” he said at length, “I do believe I’ve forgotten.”

“Yeah that’s because you’re as old as _god_ ,” Henry had said, and he’d earned a slice of mushroom to the face for his cheek.

Which was all well and good, she’d been right after all, he _had_ forgotten, but that hadn’t helped. Not with the guilt, not when he’d taken her out for her birthday, the stars above the _Jolly_ dim next to the glittering jewels he’d placed around her neck. Not with the wistfulness, as she’d watched the dwarves raise a toast to her father on his birthday and sniggered at the alarmingly lifelike sheep statue her mother had given him, a satin now perched jauntily on its head.

Killian deserved these things. He deserved a day where he was the most important person around, a day where she could spoil him and romance him and not need an excuse for why she was neglecting the hundred other things she could or should be doing.

Which is how she found herself herding fairytale characters around an enchanted ship, a string of bunting trailing behind her at all times.

Her dad had been more than delighted to keep Killian away from the docks for a day, and Emma could only hope that he’s not getting them into the sort of trouble that might need a sheriff, or worse a magic bean, to sort out.

Henry had taken his position of first mate of the _Jolly_ almost painfully seriously, eyeing the decor with a critical eye and at one point almost ripping a packet of push pins from Regina’s hand before she could stick them into the ship’s enchanted boards.

“He will _eviscerate_ you!” Henry had hissed, running his hand over the wood as if in apology.

Regina had looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes before muttering a threatening, “He can try.”

(She’d stuck to using to blu-tack after that, regardless, which kept Henry happy and the threat of bloodshed low.)

Emma was just putting the finishing touches to Granny’s frankly magnificent dark rum and ginger cake (no candles, the fire department wouldn’t stand for it) when she got the text from her dad to say there were a block away.

There weren’t quite as many hiding places on the deck of a ship as she might of hoped, so when she hears the familiar thump of his boots on the gangplank she’s happy to throw herself out from her cramped position behind a water barrel with her arms wide and her smile even wider.

“ ** _Surprise_**!”

Killian would probably have jumped, if such a thing was becoming of a fearsome pirate captain, as half the population of Storybrooke seemed to appear uninvited on the deck of his ship. Certainly Emma noticed the twitch of his hand towards where he would normally keep his sword, and the caution in the way he held his body stiff as if waiting for an attack.

“Swan? What in the blazes is going on here?”

“It’s a birthday party!” Henry chirped, delightedly, before she could open her mouth.

Killian looked from him, to Emma, to the streamers tossed haphazardly across the Jolly’s spars, his expression utterly nonplussed.

“For whom?”

This time it was David who grinned, elbowing Killian goodnaturedly in the ribs.

“For you, idiot.”

Killian didn’t really look any less confused, his eyes flickering again over the gathered townspeople, the bunting, and the cake, before settling and focusing on Emma.

“Is it my birthday?”

Emma leaned in, tugging him down by his lapels to plant a long, open mouthed kiss on him that had the dwarves hooting and hollering behind them and David grumbling about _times_ and _places_ , but she ignored all of them, only pulling away to breathe the answer against his lips:

“It is now.”


	26. Laughter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A love letter to Last Rites

It had dawned on her, on one of those long indeterminable days when he was gone, that she didn’t know what his laugh sounded like. Not a real laugh, not one free of pain, or sarcasm. Not a laugh put on to charm or misdirect. Not genuine joy unencumbered by the general stresses and weirdness of their day to day lives.

It’s not even that she’d forgotten, that she’d allowed the haze of her grief to swallow it along with the way his lips felt against hers and the sound his boots made on the deck of the Jolly. Grief hadn’t corrupted her memory of his laugh in the way it had twisted the memory of his hands on her skin (cold, always cold now when she’s sure he’d always been so warm). She simply hadn’t known. Had never known.

That realisation is worse than forgetting could ever be.

It’s on one of the worst days of her life, her hands shaking when they’re relieved of their twin burdens of flask and arrow, that that changes.

At first she can’t quite believe he’s real - appearing in a flash of white light and calling to her from the foot of his own grave like a gothic fantasy come to life - and then she’s running, running with her arms outstretched in fear he could blink out of existence at any moment, and then she collides with him and he’s _warm_ and beautiful and twittering on about something to do with _Zeus_ and she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t -

She peppers his face with kisses, all the dozens and dozens of kisses she’s regretted never giving him when she thought they had more time, and she wasted, wasted, wasted it all. And he laughs.

He laughs, clear and bell-like. A giggle, if such a thing could be imagined. A pure, desperate happiness that echoes in her own heart and thrums through her veins.

She memorises it, the rise and the fall and the catch of it, and carves a place for it deep within her chest. She won’t forget it now, not ever, and more than that, much, much more than that, she makes it her mission to hear it every day for the rest of their lives.

She’s done with wasting time.


	27. Happiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The very last smol thing! Not bad, only missing 4 days considering I was internet-less for ten days this month! Props and thanks to tlynnwords on tumblr for the idea and the prompt list, and I hope you've all enjoyed at least some of these baby bits!
> 
> Since this is the end of this project, here's what I'd like to see at the end of the show.

The sea breeze is cool against her skin, a welcome contrast to the way the sun is beating down on the back of her neck, the combined scents of ozone and hot pitch washing over her in time with the rise and rush of the waves beneath them.

Henry is in his usual spot, up on the lookout’s post with his book on his knee, one arm hooked through around the mast leaving the other free to hold his pen. Liam is halfway up the rigging, clinging on with fierce determination, the sea perhaps not quite as strong in his blood as it is in his brother’s, but close enough. Enough to begin to bring two brothers back together where circumstances and hate had so violently torn them apart.

Killian, of course, is at the helm, his jacket shrugged off hours ago as a concession to the heat, she likes to watch the way he sways with the ship as if it’s second nature, even as she makes her way towards him on unsteady legs - her centre of gravity set way off by the swell of her stomach.

“You’re wobbling,” he teases as she approaches, “one might almost say wadd - ”

“Don’t finish that thought,” she warns, “it won’t end well.”

“As you wish,” he says lightly, his hand coming to rest on her bump as she reaches him and takes the helm for herself.

“I do wish, as it happens,” she says, resting her chin on the top of the ship’s wheel and watching as Henry shuffles over to make room for Liam next to him on the small platform. Killian’s eyes follow hers, his lips settling into a gentle smile as he observes the two boys.

“Do you think this is what a happy ending looks like?” Emma asks, standing up and tilting her head back so that she can get a clear view of his face as he considers her question.

“Aye,” he says, laughter and the cries of seabirds mingling and carrying towards them, “close enough, I wager.”

Emma leans back against his chest, reveling in the combined warmth of the sun and him, and smiles.

“Yeah. I guess it is.”


End file.
